I turned toward the stairs.
“Lazarus… wait.”
His voice was rough now, stripped of its old pride. “Don’t leave. I’ll help you. I’ll do it. We’ll make your traveler.”
I stopped at the first step, the torchlight shivering against the damp stone.
“If you make one fuck-up—one—I swear I’ll bind you to your own Tome of Shadows and throw it into the fire. The shadows will feed on your screams until nothing of you remains.”
He did not laugh this time. He only watched me, the hunger flickering behind his eyes. When he spoke again, his tone was quieter—not humbled, but calculated.
“And if I behave?”
I held his gaze, the answer forming as slowly as a wound reopening. For a moment, I considered leaving him in the dark, letting the city fall rather than trust him again?—
I exhaled.
“Then I’ll give your Tome of Shadows back.”
The air seemed to vanish from the chamber. Even the shadows paused.
His eyes widened, and a tremor passed through his jaw before he hid it behind a thin smile.
“So that’s your bargain.”
“That’s my mercy,” I said.
He studied me for a long moment, the torchlight cutting across his face. Then he nodded once, slow, deliberate.
“Fine,” he whispered. “You have my word. I will obey you.”
I didn’t believe him, but I reached for the chains anyway.
The runes along the iron flared when my fingers touched them. One by one, the symbols dimmed, their light sinking back into the metal until the iron sighed and released its hold. The air thickened, hot and alive with the taste of salt and dust.
When the last link fell, he stood.
The ground trembled underfoot. The torchlight wavered.
And for the first time in fifteen years, Salvatore stood unbound—his smile small, hungry, and far too certain of the bargain he thought he’d won.
The shadows shuddered, tasting freedom for the first time in fifteen years.
I turned toward the stairs, and he followed—our silhouettes stretching long across the walls, twin ghosts walking upward from the dark—one bound by duty, the other by nothing at all.
We climbed the narrow stairs in silence.
The torchlight licked across the limestone, painting the walls in flickering gold. The air grew warmer the higher we rose, until the smell of the sea pressed through the cracks like breath.
When we emerged into the upper room, the night waited for us—salt wind curling through the shutters, the hiss of the waves below. My house felt smaller with him in it, as if his presence took more space than the walls could bear.
Salvatore crossed the room first, unhurried, the drag of his bare feet whispering over the stone. His white hair caught the torchlight, glinting like a blade’s edge. He looked around slowly, as though he were inspecting something he already owned.
“So, this is where you’ve spent your exile,” he said. “A home above my tomb. How poetic.”
I said nothing.
“Tell me, Lazarus,” he went on, “when we tear time open and make your precious traveler, what then? Are you going to save Ugarit… or are you going to crawl back into the past and drag your beloved Amara out of her grave?”
